Christopher Cao
Natalie Denton catches up with Bioware’s Christopher Cao to discover how Mass Effect: Andromeda’s characters were created and how a patch may have saved it from earlier criticisms
Bioware’s Senior Character Artist on the Mass Effect art controversy
Mass Effect: Andromeda, the eagerly awaited fourth instalment of the sci-fi role-playing videogame, had a lot to live up to following the commercial virility and critical acclaim of the original trilogy, not to mention the fervid expectations of its hardcore fan base when it launched this spring, five years after the last release. Yet disappointingly for its developer Bioware Montreal, the response thus far has been distinctly tepid, as the game failed to entice strong ratings from the press and it has secured only a mixed response from its fans. One source of the criticism was for the character art, with the figures slammed as being ‘dead in the eyes’, ‘too robotic’, whilst others cited multiple cases of imperfect lip syncing during scenes. In fact the backlash became so fervent it snowballed into an online witch-hunt, resulting in zealous keyboard warriors targeting a female EA employee, who according to reports wasn’t even responsible for the artwork.
Christopher Cao, a senior character artist at Bioware, claims that while the gaming community’s response was largely lacklustre, a different audience has appreciated the game’s art. “We had our fair share of criticism at the beginning as artists for our work, as character artists, environment artists, concept artists, but we’ve also had amazing feedback. The biggest feedback we got was from the art community and that has been the most positive that we had. Everyone at first was hating on the facial animation but once we released the characters, concept art and environments, it has been really good, everybody has been loving our work, and that to me is the most important thing, to be well received within the art community.”
In April, Bioware released a patch to sate its critics, improving the characters’ facial details and animations, which according to the gaming press has been positively received. “The real, pure fans of the brand will love Mass Effect either way, even though we made some mistakes with the release, they will still like it and give us good feedback,” the 31-year-old Québécois says. “The ones who are complaining, most are either the new consumers that Mass Effect was trying to get, people who don’t really know the lore or they are just trolls – it’s the internet, it’s fine. So the gaming community, at first, it was rough but now it’s better since we released patches to fix things. I think the community understand that Bioware are trying to support everyone, their customers and their market. I guess the people who like our game are happy and the other ones, well it’s sad, but yes we did make mistakes, but everyone’s human in the end.”
As the first game of a new series, Andromeda takes a step away from the original story and incorporates open-world elements, encouraging gamers to focus on exploration. This time the RPG shooter, set within the Milky Way in the 22nd century, follows rookie recruit Scott or Sara Ryder at the Andromeda Initiative, a strategy attempting to save humanity by populating new worlds. Christopher was hired after Bioware completed the conception
and pre-production, stages that took two years to complete. “The biggest pressure for me was not knowing that much about the licence. I’ve always been interested in Mass Effect, but I’ve never been a hardcore fan and when I started I would ask questions about this race or that planet, and my colleague Ben, who is a concept artist, would tell me the answer always followed by, ‘You should know this!’ So I decided to learn a bit more about it instead of trying to create blindly, but it took some time knowing all the lore [and] fantasy about it, because it’s such a big licence, with a big history.”
Experienced TEAM
Christopher worked on the game for two years, describing it as the ‘most fast-paced production’ he’s worked on. “This is the strongest pool of people I’ve ever worked with, but the game was very ambitious. The team was very experienced and professional in the sense that [there were] little to no juniors so everyone knew what they were doing, but it’s a big game to make and the number of staff is smaller than another type of project that might be the same size. But it’s the Bioware way of thinking; hire someone who’s more qualified to do more
WE START WITH THE 2D CONCEPT AND PICK Up ZBRUSH TO DO A QUICK BLOCKING, SO A QUICK PASS ON PROPORTIONS
Christopher Cao, senior character artist, Bioware
work than say hire two or three juniors to do the same amount of work. Also as Bioware didn’t have a lot of concept artists at that time, we had a lot more back and forth between the 3D art and the 2D art departments, so basically 2D would put less time on the concept and we would help out and fill in the blanks. In the end it worked out pretty good.”
Charged with creating humans and aliens, Christopher says each model would typically take around five to seven weeks to create. “We start with the 2D concept and pick up Zbrush to do a quick blocking, so a quick pass on proportions and on main features for a character we’re working on, to create a quick glance as to what we’ll see ingame later on because doing the whole character process takes a few weeks. If you can get an idea of your end result in a few hours it really helps visualise the art direction, and see if it works or not. Through the blocking, as the character art team, we can decide whether we like it, if we don’t we can fix or replace it. After the blocking, once it’s approved by our art director, we start the hi-res model, which is done in Zbrush. We [use] Zmodeler to do base shapes, we use a lot of masking, polygrouping and panel looping to do extractions for volume. At the end when everything is modelled out we subdivide, we add detail with brushes and when that’s done we render it out. Usually we use Keyshot to do a hi-res render and then we send it off to the art director for approval and if there’s no changes, we start doing the game model. For that, most of us use 3ds Max to do a low-res model and UVS, and we do textures in Quixel Suite. Then we import everything in to Frostbite and make sure that everything looks great and ready to send off to the next stage, which is skinning, rigging and animation, and that’s a whole other department.”
diverse Models
From the ripped, stone-like appearance of the Kett, which is one of Mass Effect: Andromeda’s new races of alien alongside the Angara, to the return of the doeeyed, amphibian-esque Salarians, Christopher and his team were responsible for generating several races of alien for the sci-fi game, as well as for creating the human contingent. “I love Mass Effect because of these opportunities. One month you’ll be making a
WHEN YOU’RE DOING A HUMAN YOU’RE BOUND By THE PROPORTIONS, BUT WHEN YOU DO AN ALIEN THERE’S MORE FREEDOM
Christopher Cao, senior character artist, Bioware
human and then next month you’ll be making an alien. There’s a lot of variety in it and with that comes different challenges. When you’re doing a human you’re bound by the proportions, but when you do an alien there’s more freedom because no one really knows what an alien looks like. But as most consumers will be able to relate to humans more easily than aliens they are therefore easier to critique. So doing humans, especially heads, is probably the hardest part for me, and the least interesting part for me to do because of that – but doing armours and aliens has been a real blast.”
With nearly a decade of experience and an enviable resume Christopher, who is currently working on a new project at Bioware, says the best piece of advice he can give those looking to work in the industry, in whatever discipline, is to spend more time working on the art than trawling through the classifieds. “Don’t focus on the job, but on the craft,” he opines. “If you’re good at what you’re doing, if you’re talented, you’ll get acknowledged by the art community and you will get noticed by the developers, it’s just a matter of time. This industry rewards talent first and foremost.”